An Ideal Husband
by Pat Foley
Summary: Amanda prepares for Sarek's first Pon Far since he recovered from vrie. And a new acquaintence poses a problem. Holo 3 Complete in 3 chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**An Ideal Husband**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 1**

_"It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us - else what use is love at all?"_

Vulcan seldom has cloudy days. While its red sun couldn't be considered cheerful from a human perspective - though to a Vulcan's perception, the sun wasn't red at all, but bright white - at least almost every day on Vulcan was a sunny one. When clouds did build and obscure the sky, usually that meant nature was going to deliver a devastating sandstorm. Perhaps obliterating the existing landscape.

Amanda could almost consider that a metaphor for her marriage. Day after sunny day, with nothing more to plague her than tiresome Federation Undersecretaries, and the occasional obnoxious Tellurite. Until another major crisis threatened to blow everything away. But at present, she'd been enjoying a sunny period.

Not that she and Sarek didn't have their issues. But with Spock in Starfleet, **that** source of argument was conveniently off Vulcan. Though not entirely out of the picture, he'd been reduced to a forbidden source of argument between them. Her tormentor T'Lean had fallen to her death from the Fortress' parapets. T'Pau had gone from shunning her to treating her as an honored daughter. Her husband and son were in a painfully negotiated truce, brokered by no less than T'Pau, the two chief combatants taking a time out in their respective corners in Starfleet and on Vulcan, with both his parents hoping that perhaps when Spock graduated, he would agree to return home. So with all these worries either settled or deferred, she and Sarek had spent a relatively happy, even blissful year. Heretical as that state might be for a Vulcan.

But nature is inexorable. The clouds always return to obscure the sky even after the sunniest period. And the storms can't be held back.

She'd been married to a Vulcan for twenty years. She knew when a certain predictable storm was coming.

Sarek was no inexperienced adolescent. He knew as well.

The difference were of control. As his grew less, hers grew more.

Or perhaps that was an inexact analogy. For her it wasn't a question of her gaining or losing control. That she always had in its human form, humans' biological necessities not being quite so all encompassing as Vulcans'. However imperfectly she chose to practice control by her Vulcan husband's standards, hers had served her adequately.

No, what she did was grow more sensible. Or realistic. The unpleasant realities of marriage to a Vulcan that she pushed to the back of her mind after a Pon Far ended, she released from that mental dungeon and dusted off their cobwebs. The old Vulcan Fortress in which she lived had plenty of dungeons to that purpose.

Or perhaps to be quite Vulcan, she released them from that chattel status to which she'd consigned them. Formerly locked away and ignored, time forced her to acknowledge them, when she could no longer fail to recognize the clouds that were obscuring her Vulcan marriage.

She made no apologies for that banishment to Sarek. Even though she knew that the bright blithe blindness she practiced in the intervals between his _Times_, her preference to avoid dwelling on the inevitability of Vulcan biology, sometimes frustrated her husband immeasurably. Perhaps to his downfall. But it was also at times their saving grace. She wasn't sure she could have the same relationship with Sarek if she didn't.

And Vulcans could also have selective recall. They too consigned Pon Far to a section of their memory they only pulled out when necessary. They just managed that compartmentalization more easily than a human could. Though as a human living with a Vulcan, she'd learned to do something of the same, with what human tools she had at her disposal.

Sarek had blind spots too. They were of shorter duration, and biologically, rather than psychologically induced. Vulcans too avoided the subject, and preferred not to speak of it. They just went about it differently.

For example, Sarek knew precisely the day he tipped over the midpoint from one Pon Far to the next, when his cycle was on its downswing. Though never consciously acknowledged or admitted to her, perhaps even to himself, from that point forward, he would begin to remind her about his need for control. Until it actually got down to the last few months, few weeks. Then he reversed his behavior and grew ever more reticent. Even as he grew ever less controlled.

And then stopped mentioning it at all.

Saying makes it more real, even for Vulcans.

From eight weeks out, he instead began to nag, nag, nag her about seemingly inconsequential schedules. His and hers. When he would be getting home. When she would be getting home. If he would be late. If she would be late. Compulsively keeping track of where they both were. As if there was some critical unmentioned appointment that they couldn't risk missing.

Two weeks out, he went from dogged nagging to impatient snapping. If she overstayed her office hours and he was home before her, she got sharp words asking why she was late.

Though she wasn't late. Not for anything at all.

Within a week of the fever, if she so much as left the room without glancing at him to let him gather his control, he rose up and took her hand as if to keep her by his side.

By **that** time, she had already informed her department chair she'd be taking a leave of absence, time indeterminate, for an _unspecified fever_. Sondt, normally very personable for a Vulcan academic, who in the past had unbent enough to admit a fondness for things human such as concerts of "cool jazz", and snacks of budding roses, gave her a grave averted acknowledgement. He all but shuddered as he granted her leave, speaking to a point somewhere over her left shoulder. He refused to look her in the eye.

As if Pon Far were catching.

In extreme circumstances, she knew some Vulcans might discuss Pon Far in the abstract, as a far distant possibility, happening to some hypothetical Vulcan. But real and in the flesh, of themselves or their neighbor, like Sondt, they disengaged and drew clear.

That probably was a wise survival instinct. No one would want to be too close to a berserk male. Or in Sondt's case, give any undue and perhaps misinterpreted attention to a female belonging to such a male. Lest you find yourself taken for a Challenger by the irrational male.

So she might have been carrying plague. The Vulcans who were her departmental colleagues stepped aside when she walked through the halls, cleared a path for her, and averted their gaze.

_I am become Death_, she thought ironically, as she slipped ghostlike through hallways, acknowledged by no one, save for strict necessity. _Destroyer of worlds._

_Poor Vulcans_, she thought pityingly. Then, considering her own involvement in this, _poor me_.

This being his first Pon Far since he had recovered from _vrie_, Sarek's healers were as frantic as Vulcans would allow themselves to be. They had also been as furious as healers could be when Sarek had refused to follow Surak's precepts regarding Pon Far preparations following his recovery from _vrie_ that they considered essential for his control. She and Sarek had often been intimate. But the operant conditioning that was supposed to help keep couples safe in Pon Far, Sarek had never reestablished after her physician Mark had told him it was possibly damaging her psychologically. Sarek had decided they were going to fly blind this time. And hope for the best. A very Human approach towards a Very Vulcan Problem. Hence the Healers' panic.

She couldn't say she missed **those **practices, though.

Since Sarek apparently had refused to discuss the matter further with his Healers, with Pon Far becoming imminent for Sarek, they broke tradition as far as to try, nervously and anxiously, to speak of the Unspoken to her.

She sat in the hallowed Healer's Hall, with a quartet of the most revered and distressed physicians on the planet. For all that she appreciated their concern, they were beginning to irritate her. Or perhaps it was the splash-by of Sarek's hormonally induced testiness through the bond that was fueling her impatience. She couldn't help but be aware that while they had every regard for her, certainly did not wish her ill, and they didn't want anything to **happen** to her, might even **like** her if they weren't healers and a degree of latitude away from even normal Vulcan unbending, what was **really** bothering them was the prospect of losing the heir to Surak. On their watch.

Their contention now seemed to be that somehow, she must have blown it before, for Sarek to have fallen into that chronic Pon Far state of _vrie_ after his last episode. And it behooved her to get it right this time.

That Sarek and she had been happy - yes, **happy**, she claimed - after his recovery, and prior to this cloud of Pon Far coming onto the horizon, they seemed not to credit. Of course. Happiness was irrelevant. **Control** was what mattered. Surak strikes again.

_Don't fumble this_, seemed to be the sole cautionary watchword from these, her coaches on the sidelines. Biology was forcing them to let a mere human carry the ball though this most important game. And she was **not** a prepossessing player by Vulcan standards.

"I not sure I understand." Amanda said, with wide eyed innocence. "I'm not the one in Pon Far. I'm the passive partner here, aren't I? In your society, my role seems confined to largely not zigging when he zags. Maybe **you** can explain to me exactly what you want me to do." And then had the malicious satisfaction of watching four elderly Vulcans turn four different shades of chartreuse.

They didn't quite faint. But rather than explaining anything in detail, they suddenly seemed to have important commitments that they had to run to. She'd probably done irreparable harm to their estimation of humans in general and herself in particular. But they left her alone after that. And she was glad of it. One falling apart Vulcan was all this human woman could handle.

She didn't bother to warn her house staff. They were all Vulcans. They understood the signs better than she. T'Rueth had long since cut back drastically on meals, since Sarek was eating practically nothing. The males faded from sight. The woman too, except for older woman, past that state.

Everyone hung, waiting, for the Fever to ripen to acute stage.

Amanda was familiar enough with the behavior that now she could now fairly reliably predict schedules. When Sarek actually snapped at her for leaving the room to relieve herself one evening, even after she gave him a glance and a minute to gather himself, Amanda made her final, practical arrangements the next morning. Pon Far was now just hours off.

No novice herself, she waited till Sarek left for work for probably his last day. She estimated he still had two more days before he lost all control, but she could always have calculated wrong. He'd still woken without a temperature this morning. But this had to be his last day in public. So she began to bring up the supplies she had organized. Not for Sarek, but for her.

She never put these preparations out ahead of time. They were unVulcan and they would just make Sarek anxious. But by this stage, fighting to hold his shattering control together, he was long past noticing anything in their surroundings when she was around except her proximity.

As for supplies for her, water of course, was the most critical. Thank heavens they had that in the adjoining bath. Most Vulcans merely used sonics. Still, in spite of having tap water nearby, she pulled case after case of bottled juices and fruit laced waters from the larders that she laid in for just this purpose. Unlike Vulcans, she would desperately need fluids, particularly in this climate, or she would dehydrate. And the sugar in the fluids helped give energy. She added containers of fruit. Even a small cache of snacks: nuts, protein and cereal bars. In a long cycle, which she'd been warned this would be, she might need those too. After watching her collect and inventory these items, T'Rueth helped her carry them up without comment, and watched while Amanda stacked them in her bedroom.

She then piled stacks of clean bed linens again next to the bed. She went to her office and removed a recently delivered shipping package containing the finest of imported Orion ointments and salves. She had ordered these weeks ago. The outrageous prices shocked her far more than their provocative names. She always went to the trouble of ordering them under a coded, privacy protected account, though the Orions were reportedly good about confidentiality. It was worth that trouble, the contents equal to their weight in dilithium to her. She opened one of the tubes, sniffed the fragrance, ran the ointment between her fingers with appreciation before carrying them to the bedroom. To be blunt, no one made pleasure products for prolonged lovemaking like the Orions. Orion pleasure girls, of course, practically lived in bed. Since Amanda did the same thing when her husband was in Pon Far, she had sought out their secrets. The products were rated safe for all Federations races, including Vulcans and humans. The Orions wouldn't think of restricting their attentions to a limited clientele.

She added stacks of prepackaged towelettes. She had learned she could only take feeling grubby for so long before she grew irritable and snappish from that alone. Neither state could she allow herself during a Pon Far.

Lastly, Amanda added ampoules of common human rated anti-inflammatories and painkillers from the bathroom medicine chest. And just to be safe, laid out a few spray hypos of morphine, in case of some injury. The bond was enhanced during Pon Far. Sarek would not intend to hurt her, even with no control and out of his mind with fever. So long as she didn't resist. Even that feedback though, wasn't instantaneous. And strong as he was, operating on Vulcan instinct rather than intellectual knowledge of her human frailty, and half out of his mind with fever, he could do serious damage even in the fraction of a second it would take him to register he was using too much strength. She knew that from personal experience.

When she was done stacking her supplies, she stood looking at them, arms folded, grim.

She wasn't looking forward to this. It looked for all the world like she was preparing for some natural disaster. Which she was, of course: a Vulcan hurricane. Everything for survival within arms' reach. And pray the wind didn't blow them all to smithereens.

Well, that was the whole point of her preparations. Vulcans of course needed none of them. Sarek had never thought of these sorts of preparations, just as he'd never expect water to flow uphill. In the shortest Pon Fars they would hardly be needed, even for her, except for the water. But when the Fever lasted for more than a few days she risked injury, not so much because of Sarek's loss of control, but more from her own. She just wasn't as tough as a Vulcan.

Her first real injuries from Pon Far were because she hadn't understood that Pon Fars varied in intensity. Nor had Sarek. For Vulcans, instinct covered all these things. She had gone into a long cycle unprepared, and had become uncomfortable enough – dehydrated, sore and short on calories and energy, that half out of her head herself with her own discomfort, she'd resisted. That could trigger a violent frenzy in a Vulcan mate. A Vulcan woman would never reach such a state, she figured, and had no need to prepare for it. At least, she'd never had anyone tell her what Vulcan women did, if they reached that state.

Now that she knew what to expect, she had to ensure she had plenty of fluids within arms' reach, had enough calories to keep going, and supplies to keep her comfortable enough not to snap. Sarek would rest at times. But he'd still be too hair trigger to countenance her leaving his side for longer than to relieve herself. Not enough for trips to the kitchen. So these items had to be close by. As Pon Far began to wane and burn itself out, he might accept her leaving him long enough to take a shower, or sleep through her taking one. Actually, he been known to take a shower with her. But during a long cycle, that could be as long as ten days out. Fasting or going without water for a week, even two, was nothing to a Vulcan. To a human, it was akin to suicide.

T'Rueth eyed these supplies with something akin to awe as she looked at her. "You are exceptionally well prepared, Mistress."

Amanda glanced at her, at that unfamiliar, archaic title. She thought of her first Pon Far, fortunately very light by Vulcan standards. She'd survived that by good fortune, sheer luck. She'd stayed hydrated by the desperate exigency of grabbing handfuls of water from the bathroom taps. And that survival due only to an indulgent husband who'd had water as well as sonics being installed in their master bath purely with the thought of pleasing her. Not thinking of Pon Far when he had, not realizing how it would save her life. Had he not, she might not have survived even that light cycle, to be here today. "I've learned to be."

"Is there anything you would wish of the staff, my Lady?"

"Just…stay out of our way." She suddenly looked at T'Rueth, realizing for the first time there was a Vulcan woman, standing right across from her. One who knew she was going into Pon Far, had been through many a Time herself, and seemed willing to be open about it. "Is there anything I should be asking of you?"

T'Rueth tilted her head at the stacked supplies and raised an evaluative brow. "Vulcans need none of this."

"No. I'm not Vulcan.

"So I can see."

"T'Rueth," Amanda said, with tentative curiosity. "I'm **not** Vulcan. Is there anything I should know, should do, should prepare for, that I haven't? To make it easier for Sarek? Or for me? I had counsel from the Healers, of course, but they frankly weren't much help. They were thinking from a Vulcan perspective. They're all men. What do **they** know of Pon Far? **They're** out of their head with fever during the worst of it, just like Sarek. Off in La-La land, while we women have to deal with the reality."

"Where is La-La land?" T'Rueth asked.

"Never mind. It's a woman's, a Vulcan **woman's** perspective that I **really** need to get through this for both our sakes."

"You can't neck pinch him," T'Rueth said suddenly.

"What?"

"A Vulcan woman, if she comes to the limit of her strength, can always subdue an amorous male for a time by that measure. Enough to grant herself a period of respite. It's not recommended, exactly. But it is possible. And it's done more often than is supposed." T'Rueth cut her eyes to her, as if to say without words that she had personal experience with that exigency.

Amanda sighed wearily. "Why would it take **twenty years** for someone, anyone, to tell me that little fact? Because I've had **men** advising me. No, I can't neck pinch him." She wiggled her fingers. "I'm human."

"But those drugs?" T'Rueth asked delicately.

Amanda's eyes widened at this surmise. "Now **I** never thought of that. I don't think I would risk trying to drug Sarek. Or that I could get a hypo in him. Anyway, I've always heard that no drug can stop Pon Far. Or that any attempt to use them could be disastrous."

"That is true. I am relieved to hear that you are aware that is the case."

"So, no to that possibility. The drugs are for me. Just in case."

"I think you are very brave, my lady."

"That's no help," Amanda said. Seeing T'Rueth's face, she sighed. "I'm sorry. I figured there was nothing, but that I might as well ask." She looked over her preparations and shrugged. "I'm going to the Academy one last time. Can you call Sarek's aides and have them let me know when he leaves there, so I can be sure I am home for him?"

"Yes, my lady."

She took her flyer out with a sense of relief. She didn't really need to go to the Academy. She could post her classes remotely. And she'd been wrapping up her work there for weeks, knowing full well this was coming.

But she wanted to get out of the house for a bit. She had to admit, truthfully, that she wished she could get off planet for a bit. Just long enough for a certain Vulcan to get through a certain biological imperative. The first _Time_ since Sarek had been in _vrie_ was bound to be taxing for her psychologically. And that it looked like it was going to be a powerful cycle was even more daunting. She was trying to be matter of fact about it, logical, practical, and not dreading it. But of course she was.

She sat down at her desk and resolutely cleared her email and set an away notice, asked her office neighbors to water her plants, sent a discreet note to Spock, warning him he might not hear from her for a bit, and tidied up her desk. Finally, she had to admit there was no other reason for her to be hanging around the Academy except that she didn't want to go home until she had to. She shut down her computer and drummed her fingers nervously on the case.

"Dr. Grayson?"

She looked up with a vaguely polite smile. The young woman in her office door was not familiar, not a student she recognized. But she might possibly have attended some of her open lectures. "Yes?"

"I wanted to speak to you. I hope you don't mind."

"I don't have a lot of time right now," Amanda said, glancing at her watch. "In fact, I was just leaving. Perhaps we could make an appointment for a meeting in a few weeks?"

"Oh, but it's terribly important that I see you now. I **must**."

Amanda knitted her brow, studying the unfamiliar face, impressed against her will by her supplicant's desire, something rare on Vulcan, where nothing rated an imperative since the Romulans attacked millennia ago, except biological impulses. It might be a nice diversion to hear of an imperative that **wasn't** biologically related. "Do I know you? Are you a former student of mine?"

"Heavens, no. I work at the Embassy. Amy Prue." She offered her hand, something even humans generally avoided on Vulcan, even with fellow humans. Amanda thought it was better to simply break that habit, living among a telepathic race. But given she mostly dealt with Vulcans now, she was probably biased. "I transferred from Rigel 9 six months ago."

"And you want to take classes at the VSA?" Amanda asked, puzzled, taking her hand politely. "Generally you have to matriculate to attend here. But there are lectures. And some open seminars-"

"Oh, no. I'm no academic," she said. "I don't know the first thing about what you do. Though we have a lot in common, I think. I'm in communications too."

"You're a communications technician? You manage the subspace relay net?" Amanda asked, trying to understand.

"Certainly not. I'm no techie! No, I work in reception. I greet people, make appointments, ferry people to the right offices."

"Then how can I help you?" Amanda asked, her brows drawing together again.

"I'm getting married," the girl said.

Amanda smiled again, politely, though at the moment, with a Pon Far looming, she had scant patience for nuptial fritillaries. She sometimes got requests for flowers from her garden for such ceremonies from friends and acquaintances, traditional Terran flowers being in short supply on Vulcan. And a few times even requests to rent the gardens for such ceremonies. She often provided flowers, and once or twice had allowed friends to hold events there, but she drew the line at renting out her gardens to strangers. It was true the staff led tour groups through parts of them, the funds generated going into helping pay Vulcan's Federation taxes. But the tours only went through once a week, and were closely shepherded. She knew the guards would never countenance groups of strangers regularly holding odd (to them) ceremonies there. And her privacy conscious husband would be appalled at the prospect. Amanda hoped it was just another request for a bridal bouquet and not anything more involved.

"At least, I plan to get married. I'm having a little trouble. I thought you could help."

"How could I help you?"

"It's who I'm marrying, you see. A Vulcan."

Amanda looked at the girl, astonished and a little taken aback. Though now that she looked at her more closely she could see her visitor was in fact, not really a girl, probably in her late twenties. Surely past falling for the popular romantically idealized view of Vulcans. "Why should the Embassy care?" Amanda asked unwillingly. "You seem to be of age."

"Terran Embassies discourage marrying _natives_, as they call them. I haven't been here three months. I've a two year contract. And if I marry now, I'll break it. From their view I would have forfeited my objectivity."

"How much of that does a receptionist need?" Amanda asked, somewhat uncharitably.

"If I break my contract, I'll be liable for my expenses at the embassy to date. I'll owe them the price of the starship trip out and my room and board. My salary will be forfeit. I'll be fired."

"I'm sorry. But I have no authority over the Embassy or their contract with you," Amanda explained. "The Embassy is an independent entity from Vulcan government. I can't imagine why you'd come to me."

"Easy enough for you to imagine," she said. "Because it's a Vulcan that I'm marrying, I thought you'd be willing to help me."

Twenty years as the wife of a diplomat and a reticent Vulcan had left enough of a mark on Amanda that she didn't immediately blurt out what she still felt at this piece of news. She bit her tongue over that. "I'm sorry. I don't have the power to intercede for you with your Embassy. I'm not that popular with them there myself."

The girl made a moue of disappointment, but seemed to take it well enough. "I suppose it doesn't matter if the Embassy turns me off," she said. "I'll still have another option."

"I don't understand."

With a sly look the woman pulled a pamphlet from her tunic. Amanda saw with a sinking feeling that it was one of the most infamous of the 'guides' to Vulcan sold in the Federation section of the orbiting space station, where the major liners docked before tour groups were shuttled or beamed down to Vulcan. All those of that ilk were banned from being sold on Vulcan, but even Vulcans could do nothing about what was sold in the Terran zone.

She had seen this book before in her own gardens. Tourists sometimes brought it in and dropped it while gathering fruit or flowers or in favor of carrying out the latter rather than the book. In heavy gravity, every ounce often felt like pounds to the unacclimated. It was ostensibly a tour guide to Vulcan. But it was told from "her" perspective, that is, some poor deluded writer's imagined perspective of hers. It didn't actually say she wrote the words, in fact, it attributed the text to some tourist guide organization. But it was liberally spotted with pictures of herself and Sarek and written in first person. Unsophisticated tourists assumed it was her words. The problem was that it was horribly inaccurate, and leaned heavily on the old Cinderella marries Prince Vulcan romance portrayal of her life.

"Once I marry," the girl said. "I won't need that job anymore will I? I'll have what **you** have – and I won't deny it's why I took the job and came here in the first place. But everyone keeps telling me lies, so I thought I had better get the straight dope from you."

"That book is horribly inaccurate," Amanda said flatly.

"It can't be that far off," she said. "I took your tour. I've seen your house. That's what **I** want."

Amanda despaired at having to explain that even as ancestral clan seats went, there were few on the scale of the Fortress on Vulcan, much less felt able to compare it to the ordinary modern dwellings most Vulcans naturally preferred to reside in. Tradition required the heir to Surak remain resident in the mountain Fortress, but due to its exposed, even chilly location in the Llangon foothills, most Vulcans regarded Sarek as stoically enduring discomfort, rather than envying him or replicating that environment. That the Fortress was more compatible for her physiology was an unusual bonus that would hardly transfer to any other potential human planning to marry a Vulcan and reside on that world. "Whom are you planning to marry?" Amanda asked carefully. "Do I know him?"

"You will of course," she said, "But I don't think you do now. Though he says he knows you. That is, he's seen you, from a distance. It's Stregan, of the clan Skegallan."

Amanda blinked at this. Now that she was in Council, she knew something more of Vulcan clans than she had before. Skegallan wasn't so much a clan as a loose confederation of the clanless. Originally composed of nomads and desert wanderers, often from the inhospitable equator or the south, those who had never held clan lands or clan seat, now it also contained those whom over millennia had been cast off from the main clans, or those who separated themselves from their clans. It gave them representation and votes in Council. The Skegallan clan was known on Vulcan as the phantom clan because it was composed of wanderers and the displaced. This knowledge gave Amanda no clearer picture of this woman's potential home or fate.

"What does Stregan do?" Amanda asked.

"He's a customs inspector. He works at the space station, sometimes. That's where I met him. But he's based at crew quarters in Iolani spaceport. That's where we're going to live after we're married." She hugged her book. "I'll have princess gardens just like yours and tourists from all over the Federation will come to see them."

Amanda knew Iolani. It was on the equator, and thus rarely frequented by tourists, who generally came down to the Sirakvui spaceport nearest to Shikahr. Iolani dealt mostly with cargo, and with shuttles and crafts servicing the geocentric satellites and other stations circling the equator. And with a desert reclamation project that might in several millennia show results. Vulcans often took the long view.

Amanda had been there just once, when traffic had been diverted from Sirakvui to Iolani for security purposes. Sarek had hustled her onto a climate controlled shuttle mere minutes after their arrival. But the memory of that arid wasteland still made her shudder. If Vulcan was a vision of hell, Iolani was the epicenter of that inferno. It might only rain infrequently in Shikahr, or during a certain season, but it **did** rain and you could find surface water in the mountains. The air had some humidity in Shikahr. The massive oasis under Shikahr that supported the city had been famous for thousands of years as supporting one of the most fertile spots on Vulcan. Shikahr was known as the 'city of a thousand fountains' for that reason. Sarek's clan had originally gained much of its wealth and power, and its legendary history of war and conquest just for keeping and holding this most valuable area on Vulcan. The prevalence of water over and under the Llangons was a valued feature of Sarek's clan lands. But it was not common elsewhere on Vulcan. And at the equator, there was practically none.

"Have you ever been to Iolani?" Amanda asked skeptically.

"No." The girl gave her an irritated look. "What difference does **that** make? Vulcan is Vulcan."

"No. It is not." Amanda tried to imagine how to explain the huge difference between crew quarters at Iolani and the old Fortress or even Shikahr. Most Vulcans found the micro-climate of the mountainous Fortress damp and chilly, particularly at certain seasons of the Vulcan year. The Fortress had been built to guard the mountain passes from the Llangon Mountains into the oasis lands of the Shikahr Plains. The head of Surak's clan lived there almost as a testament not only to history but to warrior fortitude. That it happened to suit human environmental needs better than most of the rest of Vulcan was a plus for her. But even Surak's clan had booted from it millennia ago, now living in the Shikahr Plains, an area far more hospitable to Vulcans. Only the clan head was expected to endure the discomfort of the original clan Fortress. Most Vulcans considered Sarek a martyr to the twin gods of tradition and duty.

When Surak had come into power, even **that** legendary warrior had rapidly built a new clan seat on the other side of Shikahr, in the dryer plains, leaving the Fortress to languish as an almost obsolete guard and war post, now that it was no longer needed to defend the city. That new seat now by tradition housed the Matriarch of Vulcan. T'Pau's palace had all the advantage of unlimited water from Shikahr's deep springs, and a more hospitable climate for Vulcans. Even T'Pau perfunctorily commiserated with Sarek over his archaic residence, with some recent hints that it would be soon enough that Sarek could relocate, when Spock came of age. Amanda had come to realize that as much as she had come to love her archaic home, it was considered something of an embarrassing relic. The equivalent of a starter home, for in her family, the parents got the Palace. The kids roughed it in the old Fortress.

But it was not more hospitable to humans. Amanda found even Shikahr's heat and lack of humidity nearly unbearable in summer, in spite of it being the city of a thousand fountains. When she had to spend time in Shikahr in the height of summer, she could hardly wait to come home. And that was just for a day's teaching, not to live.

She couldn't imagine living at the equator herself. And she wouldn't give a human odds on living three days in Iolani before being carried out on a stretcher. Not unless the human were living in an entirely enclosed artificial climate. And crew quarters in Iolani were designed for Vulcans, not outworlders. Which meant very little in the way of environmental leeway, sonics rather than water facilities for bathing, and highly restricted conservative water use.

So far as Amanda knew there **were** no outworlder modifiable living environments there. Even the spaceport, meant for Vulcans alone, had no outworlder compatible environmental controls. And water in that area of Vulcan was of limited and poor quality. Extra water had to be brought in, for the deepest wells there could not provide enough for the spaceport crew's drinking needs. Water was prodigiously expensive.

"I don't think a human can survive living at Iolani," Amanda said bluntly.

"Stregan mentioned that. He said he thought it best if **he** lived in Shikahr with **me**."

"I'll just bet he did," Amanda said. Even a Vulcan would get the hell out of Iolani if he could. Particularly if he could live in comfortable Shikahr.

"But he doesn't understand that the Embassy will kick me out of my apartment when I marry him because I'll have broken contract. And I'll owe them a big penalty that I can't afford. But I don't care. I'm not marrying him to keep working for the Embassy. I want to have a real Vulcan marriage."

"What does that mean to you?" Amanda asked wonderingly.

"Why one with all the trimmings." She hugged her book again.

"You can't use my marriage as an example," Amanda said, appalled. "And that book isn't accurate. How do you expect Stregan to afford what you'll need to keep you alive, much less comfortable at Iolani? Particularly if you are not working? His income probably won't extend to a lot of luxuries. Even just the basics for a human will be out of his range at Iolani. Don't you know water is one of the most expensive commodities on Vulcan? And doubly so in that climate."

"That's where I thought you could help."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Stregan is going to marry a human. So **he** could be a diplomat like Sarek. Then we could live in a palace too."

Amanda tried to think of a way to counteract the myriad deeply flawed assumptions inherent in that statement. "Marrying a human is **not** an instant qualification for a career in diplomacy."

"I didn't think you would be this way," the girl accused. "So unhelpful."

"I am trying to help you, if only by telling you the truth."

"I thought you'd understand. Help a young romance. Like yours was once." She waved her book. "Not be so…poisonously jealous. Trying to keep all the Vulcans to yourself. Trying to keep all the **romance** to yourself."

"Oh, my god," Amanda muttered. Her communications unit chimed softly, and she saw the notice that Sarek's aide sent, warning her that her husband was on his way home. His control unravelling further if she wasn't there to meet him. She couldn't risk that, not in this first Pon Far after _vrie_. "Believe me, I'm not. One Vulcan all by himself is **more** than any human can handle. And I'm talking practicality, not romance."

Amanda looked at her watch. "Look, I can't really talk about this now, but you should not make any hasty decisions. Marriage to a Vulcan is for **life**, you know. You need to understand what you are getting into before you make that commitment, for his sake as well as yours." Amanda rose and began to gather her things as she spoke. "Your intended _fiancé_ needs to take you to see a Vulcan healer, so you can understand what marriage to a Vulcan **really** means. Don't base your expectations on pulp romance. And you need to explain your legal situation with him. You should talk to your supervisor at the Embassy or the Terran Consul. They can explain the ramifications of marriage to a Vulcan for a human, the citizenship issues. You should talk to our medical staff about what living under Vulcan conditions does to humans. And someone needs to explain their culture to you. And what bonding means. Though I'm not sure how much any human **can** understand of it. All that will take some time. If you are still determined, after all that, **I** can talk to you in a few weeks. But not now."

"Oh, I can't wait that long," the girl said guilelessly.

"Why not?" Amanda asked, looking up from her things.

"Why should I wait? You got married to a Vulcan, when you were younger than I am. You knew what you were doing. So do I."

"Our situations are **not** similar. And I don't think you really do know. I must counsel you to wait."

"But I can't wait."

"Why **not**?" Amanda repeated, frustrated.

The girl bridled, smiling coyly. "You know why."

Amanda stared at her, unwilling to draw the obvious conclusion. "No. I don't."

"**You** know. Vulcans have that mating fever. Stregan is going into it."

In spite of being human, Amanda had absorbed enough of Vulcan delicacy that she colored up to the roots of her hair. "Miss Prue. You shouldn't be telling me this."

"Oh, I don't mind. I think all that Vulcan stuff is terribly romantic. Sort of Vulcan cave man. He's gotten all abrupt and sharp. And dominant. It's **thrilling**, really. **I** can't wait, even if **he** could. And he **can't**. That's another reason why I know I can afford whatever I want. I'm going to write a book, you see. Like yours," she held up a romance novel.

"That's **not** my work-"

"Only it will be the **real** story. Maybe they'll make a film from it. I can't imagine why **you** never told about this sexual frenzy thing, but it works out **great** for me. The press will fall all over a first-hand account of it. It will really **sell**. I'm going to make millions. I'll be so rich. I'll have gardens bigger than yours." Her eyes grew starry in speculation. Then she drew up, remembering, newly injured. "So it doesn't matter if the Embassy kicks me out, or your Sarek doesn't take my Stregan into diplomatic service. After our honeymoon, we'll go on talk shows and give interviews, **real** interviews, with all the details. Not **hide** it all like you did. We'll make a fortune. Appearance fees, movie rights, book deals. I'm going to have **everything** I wanted. It'll just take a little longer. But I will. That's **why** I came to Vulcan after all. That's why the Embassy is so **mad**. I knew what I wanted. I just needed to find the right Vulcan."

"The right Vulcan," Amanda echoed, appalled. "Do they do psych studies on prospective employees?" she asked.

"Funny you should ask that. That's what the Consul asked my supervisor. He said that it's hard to get anyone to come to Vulcan. They had to take what they could. That's partly why they have the contract set up as it is. But **that** won't stop me," she said with satisfaction.

"Most Vulcans marriages are arranged. What happened to Stregan's first wife?" Amanda asked warily.

"Some sort of accident," the girl said indifferently. "Seven or eight years ago."

"That long?" Amanda said, blanching.

"It's a more than decent interval of grieving, even for Vulcans," Prue said haughtily. "And Stregan really **needs** to get married. He wants me," she giggled. "**You** know. He hasn't had a woman in that long."

Amanda drew a breath, more than just appalled. "You plan to get married and your first experience with him, and his since his last -" Amanda swallowed the words, too Vulcan-conditioned to say them before a relative stranger, "- is going to be in - No. You **can't** do this!"

"Who are **you** to tell me what to do?" Prue said, pushing back in her chair. "I thought you were going to **help** me. I thought you would **understand**."

"It's **you** that doesn't understand. Look, if you won't listen to me, then at least talk to the physician attached to the embassy. Mark Abrams. He can explain."

"Oh, they already tried to get me to go to him. I refused."

"Refused? Why?"

"I've gotten enough lectures from my supervisor and the Consul. Abrams works for **them**. He'll just try to talk me out of it. Repeat the same lies. It's what they pay him to do."

"He will tell you the truth."

"Like you?"

"I **have** tried to tell you the truth, as much as I can. And help you."

"You're trying to discourage me. Stop me."

"Yes, I am," Amanda admitted.

"Thanks but no thanks," the woman said, rising. "I've already made up my mind. I thought we could be friends. Best friends. Both of us married to Vulcans. That you'd understand."

"It's you that don't understand. I'd help you more if I could." Her communications unit beeped again, urgently. Amanda looked at her watch, and rose. "But I just don't have the time now. Please promise me you'll talk to Mark."

"I don't have time either."

"You can't make that decision with so little knowledge of what you are doing."

"You did," the woman said coyly. "And look how it turned out for you. You have it all. Everything you could possibly want." She waved her books.

"No, I don't!" Amanda said, more candid with this stranger than she had been with most of her friends. "That is a fantasy," Amanda snapped. "A fairy tale."

"Well, I want the fairy tale too."

"Marriage to a Vulcan is not **like** that. And if you even **survive** what you are planning, if you think it is some kind of get rich quick scheme, or that the Council or the Federation or even the Terran Embassy will let you go out and embarrass the Vulcan government by telling Vulcan secrets to the galaxy at large, an Embassy employee under contract, you are mistaken."

"They can't stop me. I'm a Federation citizen. I'll do what I want."

"And once you marry a Vulcan, you also become a Vulcan citizen. Their laws take precedence. And your husband wouldn't **want** you to tell. Didn't you listen to anything your Consul told you? Have you really talked to Stregan about this?"

"I know what I want. I set out to do it, and I have it in my grasp. And nothing and no one is going to stop me. Even if you, the First Princess of Vulcan," she said sarcastically, "doesn't want any rival spoiling your limelight."

"Believe me that is not why I am counseling you against it." Amanda looked at her watch again. "I'm sorry, I just have to go. Talk to Mark. Talk to the Terran Consul. **Don't** get married yet."

"All you've done," the girl said, "is convince me I had better do it now and soon, before anyone else tries to stop me,"

"No. Please!"

The girl turned back, and Amanda drew a relieved breath. But then she saw the look of frustrated fury on her face. "And I know something else, Lady Amanda. Something my Stregan told me about you and that fancy diplomat of yours. Something that might embarrass you in an interview or an article. I don't know it all, not enough. I wasn't paying much attention when my Stregan told me about it before. But I'll get the true word from him soon enough. And then I'll write my own story about you and that husband of yours," She waved the book, "and get paid for it too. Maybe it will be the first interview I give. Unless **you** choose to pay to keep it quiet."

"Miss Prue!" Amanda called. But Amanda was talking to a retreating back.

She debated going after her. But one final look at her watch convinced her she had to fly.

_to be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**An Ideal Husband**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 2**

_"Let women make no more ideals of men..."_

She didn't get home before Sarek, as she'd hoped. She arrived with him.

His flyer landed the same time as hers, but when she stepped out into the hanger, he was already there, in front of her, a look of urgency, stress on his face she had never, well rarely, seen.

"Sarek?"

He lowered his head, "Hours, now."

_At least he can still speak_, she thought critically, evaluating everything from his posture to his breathing. _And English too. Twelve hours. Maybe fifteen. _Those were also the first words he had said to her about what was coming.

"I've cancelled everything," she assured him. "I'm here for the duration." Then when he didn't raise his head, or reply, or do anything except breathe raggedly, she was consumed with pity for him. "You look terrible. I wish this wasn't so hard on you."

He did look at her then. "It will be harder on you."

"If you're making it harder on yourself by trying to fight it, then just don't," Amanda said. "You know you can't stop it. And it just makes things worse for you. Maybe for me, too."

At that oblique reference to _vrie_, he looked over her shoulder, at the farthest range of the distant Llangon Mountains, eyes narrowed. "Amanda. There's still time. If you get away now, off planet- Sascek could take you." He gasped at that, and faltered.

She realized he must have come back to himself, in a last ditch effort to warn her, save her. A noble but futile effort. "You'd come after me. You know that you'd **have** to. Wherever I went, you could find me through the bond."

"I might not catch you, before…"

"You'd die trying. Anyway, I would never do that, Sarek. That's not a solution, for you or for me. You're just trying to avoid the unavoidable. The only answer for either of us is to see this through."

"I don't **want** to," Sarek muttered, as if to himself.

She laughed at that, albeit without humor. But it was funny, in that she had never in her life heard him sound so human. His disgruntlement was almost comic, given their situation. "Well, I don't either. But we don't have a choice. And your running away is no more a solution than my running away. We're bonded. We made the commitment. We just have to get through it now. It won't last forever." She reached up and put a hand on his cheek. "It won't last six months," she said, her voice catching a little. "Two weeks at best. I can handle that. We can."

He caught his breath, stricken. "Amanda-"

"This is the deal we make with life, my husband. The pain we have to go through now, is part of the happiness we share otherwise. It's part of some cosmic balancing act."

"Not for humans."

"You **can't** be wishing you were human. Or if you are, that does convince me you're far from your right mind. You would never wish for that, after."

Sarek just shook his head, philosophical arguments beyond him.

"We should go in," she said. "You should try and eat something."

He shuddered at that. "I couldn't possibly."

"Well, I'm not hungry either. But I am going to force myself because I should. So should you. And if you can't eat, you must at least try to drink some water." She took his hand, tugged at it. "Come on."

T'Rueth served them silently, putting food out, even though her skeptical look at Sarek told Amanda what she thought of the likelihood of him eating. She said nothing, but before she left, she gave Amanda a significant glance, and a tilt of her head that indicated she was prepared to leave. Amanda nodded, and heard the garden door click behind T'Rueth as she vacated the house. The rest of the house, the nearby gardens, were silent. Deserted. Save for Sarek and her.

"Drink," she told Sarek. He looked at her, as if not understanding her. She repeated the command in Vulcan. He looked down at the water, as if he didn't understand where it came from or what relevance it had to him.

She took the glass and held it to his mouth. He allowed the liquid to touch his lips but did not drink. She gave up then and finished her own meager meal, not wanting anything too heavy on her stomach. She forced down a second glass of water and then rose, looking around the room almost as if she were seeing it for the last time. The extremes of Vulcan biology tended to bring out the fatalist in her. But Sarek had obviously expended the last of his fragile control, in urging her to leave. And seemed now beyond speech. Twelve hours, or a little less. And then the acute stage of the Fever would be upon him. And her. To burn through. Or burn up.

"Just get through this one, Amanda," she muttered. After this bad one, the next Pon Far would be absurdly light, not much more than a passionate weekend. Even the next one after that wouldn't be that bad. These extreme Pon Fars only came cyclically. She looked over at her husband, not wanting to startle him by rising. "Sarek," she said softly. She held out a hand.

He closed his eyes, and she watched him come back to some semblance of himself. Enough to move, if she moved with him. He put his hand in hers and they climbed the long stair.

In the master bedroom, Amanda did a final check of her supplies, laid out a glass of water nearby and ready, and then prepared for bed.

She helped Sarek undress, his own fingers clumsy and shaking on seams and fasteners and drew him down into bed next to her. But he shied from touching her now. He wasn't ready yet, even normal libido short-circuited by his physiology. She laid down by his side, and closed her eyes resolutely. Much as it might be considered impossible to sleep in these circumstances, she mastered enough control of her own body, purely human bio feedback means, to let her take advantage of this respite. And better to sleep than run. And if she stayed awake, counting down the moments to nightmare, she would be tempted to run.

When dawn broke, she was dreaming the Fortress was on fire, flames crackling up the tapestries, the stone walls crumbling and blackening in the intense heat. The very sand foundations melting and glassifying. She woke to find Sarek no more than half conscious at her side, his skin burning with fever, waves of heat shimmering off his body. At its acute stage, Pon Far was cruel.

Her rising stirred him from the Fever. Or rather it stirred what Sarek had become. She knew that Vulcan. Had met him periodically over the years, from one Pon Far to the next. Had dealt with him through the six months of vrie, though the months leading up to those incidences. The hair trigger, testosterone fueled entities Vulcans became when they lost their control. Their veneer of civilization. Thin but so strong. Until it cracked.

She gasped when he turned to her, and she saw that face again. Nightmares she'd suppressed for two years came back in stark reality. She couldn't help, couldn't stop herself from flinching. But she didn't run. Even in terror she knew that was fruitless. He clutched at her, his strength fortunately yet tempered to her bones. She swallowed hard and forced herself to relax, and slid beneath him, even as he moved to cover her. He put fingers to her temples, and the fragile barriers she had against his condition burned away like tissue paper before a lit match. And then they were both engulfed in an inferno, like fallen angels from Milton's Paradise Lost. Falling endlessly, flames licking up around them, surrounding and encompassing, burning and yet not consuming. Somewhere she was soundlessly screaming, flames sucking up the oxygen in the air, taking her breath. And Sarek was there too. Even though her Sarek had been physically replaced by this relentless pre-Reform Vulcan, through the bond **her** Sarek was still with her, frantic, flaming, burning, near dying. He clutched her to him and she to him, sole surcease and lifeline, before they both lost themselves to the flames.

She came back to awareness some time later. She was dry as sand inside and out, eyes, mouth and other areas. The water glass at her side was empty, but she snagged some juice and drank half a bottle in one long parched swallow. That gave her enough awareness to realize she was ravenously hungry, her stomach flat against her backbone. Her fingers fumbled and found a bowl of fruit. She ate half a peach in a few bites. And that was enough, for now, her stomach having shrunk in the …days? since she had last eaten.

That gave her enough energy to look at Sarek. His skin was still burning with fever, but it wasn't as intense as the level he'd been at when the fever had started. His breathing was shallow, but he was breathing. She slipped out of bed, took care of certain basic functions, and then stepped into a hot shower. She was only in it for a few minutes before Sarek joined her. That was a measure of his level of fever, Never would he voluntarily step under a shower of water except in this state. He shivered violently as the water soaked his fever hot skin, but he seemed otherwise unaware of it, still pulled her against him, pushed her against the shower wall and took her then and there, while the water poured down on them both. But at least she got a shower out of it, for him and her.

She'd left towels out. With his head a little clearer, post sex, Sarek was aware enough again to be eager to get rid of the chilling dampness. She managed to get the bed stripped and the sheets changed while he toweled off, before Sarek came back to her. And then they were lost to flame again.

The episodes of fever repeated themselves until she finally woke one morning not from a dream of fire, but of water. She was so thirsty. She sat up with difficulty – everything ached so it was torture to move, but her thirst was worse – and opened a bottle of juice. After her third, she felt somewhat sloshy, but able to look around her.

The sun wasn't quite up yet, but the room held the gray light of dawn. Sarek was still sleeping, his face sunken and wasted from fever, but when she held a cautious hand above him, not daring to touch, his skin was just little hotter than normal Vulcan temperature, and he was breathing normally. She had to hold onto a bedside table to get up, but she got her feet under her, and made it under her own power to the bath. This time, she managed to shower alone, using all those Orion ointments. Once out, she tossed everything nearby fastidiously into the fresher. Towels and piles of rank sheets were scattered around, testament to unremembered times she had done this half asleep or unaware. Then, feeling shaky, sat down and ran a brush through her damp hair. Once her hair was pulled back, out of her way, she brushed her teeth.

Sarek was still sleeping. She had no intention of waking him. She made herself a meal of some fruit and nuts, watching him warily. When he still hadn't stirred, she counted her lucky stars and piling her hair on top of her head, ran herself a hot bath, liberally laced with more Orion body soothers. Half an hour's soak didn't make her well, but she felt somewhat human again, not an aching shell of skin and bone wracked with pain and fever. She pulled herself out of the bath when the water cooled, before she fell asleep again. And then returned to Sarek's side. He still hadn't stirred. That was good, it meant the fever was waning.

He woke a few hours later, but the encounter was brief and he fell asleep immediately after. The trend continued – longer periods of sleep and briefer periods of sex. She took stock of her own condition. Her Orion products had probably saved her from any serious internal damage. She was very sore, but not bleeding. No apparent internal injuries. She had some bruises from being clutched too tightly – she suspected she might have a cracked or sprung rib, but nothing serious there.

She had survived.

And Sarek's fever was waning. With the worst apparently over, he looked like he might survive as well.

On the twelfth day after they had climbed the stairs to their suite, he woke. His first move was not to reach for her. He sat up and looked around, looked at her. She had sat up too, knees under her, her own senses hair trigger. But he still didn't reach for her.

Instead she felt him stretching his senses through the bond, to check on her condition. She held herself open to that contact, with a bit of difficulty. Once she might have pulled back, post Pon Far, from a surfeit of such attentions. But she'd learned that could be disastrous, given his state of Pon Far. She bit back the comment that he could at least ask her how she was feeling. Because that was the human in her. Not only was this mental contact normal in his culture; it was courteous. Her shielding against him would have been the exception and not the rule. Given Sarek's prior medical history with_ vrie_, it was a reflex she had to guard against. He was still in an unfinished state of Pon Far. She had to be with him until it terminated normally.

She felt the mental link lesson somewhat, and Sarek drew a breath of relief. He didn't apologize for his action, and she told herself not to expect it. What would be polite respect for privacy between bondmates under normal circumstances was precluded during Pon Far. Then the flames flickered again in his dark eyes.

"Amanda," Sarek said quietly, and then pulled her to him.

But he had his voice back. That was something. _Two more days, then_ she thought. _Two._

Perhaps it was some compensation for her that she sensed through the encounter that he was as aching and sore as she was. Fortunately it was brief, and then he slept again.

And those two days passed without incident, largely sleeping, save a few more brief encounters, as the final embers of the fever cooled and died.

Until they woke one afternoon. It was Vulcan's usual, brilliantly sunny day. Sarek's temperature was back to normal. When she opened her eyes, she saw that he was watching her, but not touching. He hadn't reached for her.

"Amanda?" he asked her.

"Is it over?" she croaked through a dry throat. She sensed that it was. But she was human enough to want to hear it, in words. In his words.

"Yes." He sat up and reached to her supplies, opened a bottle of juice. He moved to help her sit up. She couldn't quite keep herself from flinching a little at his touch, but she caught herself and allowed it. He did help her, but let go as soon as she could manage on her own. She took a sip, then a long swallow, closing her eyes. When she finished it, he took it from her hand. Then rose and tossed the container in the recycler.

Then he came back, picked her up, and put her in a chaise lounge nearby. Went and stripped the bed, replacing the sheets with fresh ones. She eyed her stacked supplies, noting how they were substantially depleted. But the room was neat. Sarek must have woken hours ago. Put himself in a light healing trance to heal the worst of his sore muscles. He was moving without much soreness or hesitation. He must have eaten and drank from the cache of supplies, because she knew she hadn't eaten all that. Cleaned up. When he had finished the bed, and put the sheets in the fresher, he brought her, unasked, another container of juice.

"How many days?" she asked, when she had drunk half of it.

"Twelve," he said, his voice clipped.

Tears had sprung to her eyes, shock and relief mixed, but a few moments of deep breathing and she got herself past the crying jag that threatened. "That **was** a bad one." She looked him over. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," his voice was terse.

She blinked at that. "Sarek?"

He looked at her, and then as if relenting, came and sat near her. "I'm well. I'm just..."

"Angry with yourself," she said. Then added. "That's...silly."

"You do not see yourself at the moment."

She shifted uncomfortably. "I'm in one piece." She looked down at herself. "I think. I've lost some weight." She eyed him. "So have you."

He said nothing.

She marshaled enough energy to take a deep breath, a painful one, under her present state of circumstances. But it had to be said. "Sarek, if you nurse that anger and resentment at your Vulcan self, if you blame yourself, rather than letting yourself heal, then you might end right back in that chronic, unfinished state that led to _vrie_. And that we can't risk. So please don't."

He startled at that. "I wouldn't-"

"See your healers," she said hoarsely. "Make sure you're well."

"I think you had best see your own healers."

"Tomorrow," she murmured. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open. "Sleep now."

He picked her up, and she dimly felt him putting not fingers, but lips to her temple, reviewing her physical state. "Very well, my wife." He laid her back in bed.

She caught his hand, entwining her fingers with his. Reinforced by Pon Far, the touch gave her deep contact through the bond, letting her sense his physical state, even as he could feel hers. She was too tired to discern his thoughts. "Stay with me. Yes?"

"Always," she heard, before she spiraled down, not flaming now, just entwined into blissful, beautiful rest.

_It really might be worth it_, was her last conscious thought before she drifted off.

The next morning, Sarek was gone before she woke, even though it was early. That **was** a bit cowardly of him, she thought a bit uncharitably. And her mood spiraled down in response. Still, she understood his inclination to run and hide. Or perhaps, with Vulcan thoroughness, he intended to follow her instructions above all practical considerations. It wouldn't be the first time a Vulcan saw the trees rather than the forest. Their judgment was definitely not human.

She called her physician. It was early enough she caught him at home. He'd have been expecting a call from her about now, since she'd warned him too, before the fever hit. She let him know she was coming in. "I'll need some sonics," she said curtly. "No nurse."

The request, the way she said it, was shorthand for them. He would know why she needed sonics, why she wanted privacy.

"Before morning scheduling?" he asked cautiously.

"I'd prefer it."

She cut the connection before he could ask her how she was. After two weeks of mostly mental contact, it was almost unreal to talk, and chit-chat felt painful.

She got herself bathed and dressed without too much difficulty and went out into the brilliant day. It did feel odd to go out of the gate - shades of captivity hovering over her. But that faded once she put her flyer into gear and headed for the Federation Enclave and her physician's office.

Once there, she changed into the skimpy exam gown and lay done on the treatment table, an arm thrown over her eyes before he had finished pulling up her chart, which he kept coded and triple encrypted away from his standard medical files, just to be safe.

Mark looked over the network of bruises she sported from wrists to arms to thighs, the inevitable consequence of a Human subjected to barely tempered Vulcan strength and said, unguarded, "Whew! You look like hell, Mandy."

"Just do the sonics okay?" she said, uncharitably. "I want to get out of here before your morning staff arrives."

"Cheerful, aren't we?" He said, but set up the sonic session, and scanned her during it. "You're not in too bad shape otherwise," he said, in grudging surprise, reviewing the results.

"Orion pleasure products. What an endorsement I could give them if I didn't have Vulcan's reputation, not to mention mine, to protect. I wonder what they'd pay me for it."

"Hmmm. You're not too badly bruised either, considering how bad this session was. Maybe he's getting older? Less able to toss you around with a fingertip."

"I'm getting older too." Amanda sat up wearily.

"Was it bad?"

She shook her head. "Long. I lost track of everything. I don't remember it well."

"I've heard that before," Mark said skeptically.

"Oh, shut up, Mark. I was caught up in a bond with an out-of-his-mind Vulcan in the grip of a devastating fever for at least ten days, and slept most of the last two. Spare me your shrink theorizing. **You** wouldn't remember much either. No one would."

"Maybe not," he looked over her results again. "You're still dehydrated, but not too badly. All in all, I'm impressed. I've seen you come out of these things in worse shape. Especially considering the intensity of this one."

"I had plenty of warning. I had everything prepared. Plenty of fluids so that I wouldn't dehydrate. Anti-inflammatories, to minimize bruising. Clean sheets. I'm no silly neophyte. I **know** how to do this now."

"Something here though," Mark said, pointing his scanner at one darker than average bruise on a rib.

"Zigged when I should have zagged. I got a little clumsy. He got a little clumsy. It's nothing."

"Just a hairline crack, not a fracture," Mark said, and reached out to trace the rib line. "I can fuse it, you shouldn't need a-"

"Don't **touch **me!" Amanda snapped, suddenly furious.

Mark paused. "Easy. I've got to touch you a little, to treat you." He waited for her to answer and when none was forthcoming, he said, "Amanda. Are you okay?"

She still didn't answer, folded in on herself and began to cry. Finally falling apart as she hadn't dared to at home, with Sarek depending on her. Here where there were only human expectations, and human reactions, she could risk being human herself. At least for a moment's brief loss of control.

"Amanda," Mark looked from her to the wall clock, thinking of his arriving staff, and how Amanda would hate to have them see her in this state. But they still had time. And if not, then the hell with her public image. "It's hard to comfort someone, when you can't touch them," he said to her, wanting to at least give her a hug, but leery of touching.

Amanda choked out a laugh. "We're Vulcan here, don't you know? We don't touch, not casually. It's either palm to palm in holy palmer's kiss. Or we go straight to rape."

"It was rape then?" Mark asked neutrally.

Amanda scrubbed at her eyes. "Perfect non-directive counseling technique, Mark. You really ought to hang out a shingle."

"Was it rape?" Mark asked.

"You make me laugh," she said. "If he were a human, it would be rape. And if I were a Helios being, I'd lop his head off after sex, and eat it as a tasty snack. And if wishes were horses, every dewy eyed romance reader would have her own fantasy Vulcan, and Pon Far would be a magical marathon lovemaking session, and not a physiological rut with a partner who can't even speak. But he's Vulcan. So, no, it wasn't."

"I thought you and Sarek were doing well?"

"We were. We are. Or will be. This wasn't **Sarek**, Mark."

"Of course it was."

"No. That's where you don't really understand. It wasn't." She let out a deep sigh. "But it doesn't matter. It's over." She looked up at him. "I had my requisite post Pon Far nervous breakdown. Does that make you happy? I'm fine now."

"Amanda, I really doubt - " he reached out a hand, touch be damned, but she stiffened even before he made the contact, her eyes widened and she smacked her palm to her forehead. "Oh, my God, I just remembered. Romance readers!"

"What? Is something hurting or-"

"Nothing. Sorry. I'm not going crazy, really." She sat up, moving somewhat cautiously. "Mark, sorry to disparage your technique, but those sonics haven't quite kicked in yet."

"Give them a few hours. I can give you something until then."

"No."

"What was that about romance readers?" he asked cautiously.

"I just remembered this silly girl, who was in my office a few weeks ago. Amy Prue. I have to follow up on her. Still, I'm sure even **she** wouldn't have been so stupid as to - I meant to ask you about her anyway. Do you know her?"

He turned his back to that, and puttered away at getting out his instruments. "I know the name. She's not a patient of mine."

"Well, I guess that's some good news. She certainly would have been, had she gone ahead with her plans. Someone must have prevailed some sense on her. I suppose there's some blessings left in the universe."

He turned, his face neutral. "I'm more concerned about you." He touched an overlooked tear on her cheek.

She scrubbed the remaining tears away, blushing in embarrassment. "I'm not …traumatized." Seeing his disbelieving face, she scowled, "not the way you think. It's just the first one since – you know. And it was such an intense one. But I was warned that it would be. Come on, Mark. I wouldn't be **human**, if I didn't have a tear or two in me after that."

"More than you're showing, I should think."

"You're not happy when I cry, and you're not happy when I don't cry. You're impossible to please."

"I'd be happier if you weren't in this situation."

"I'm not really hurt, and I'm no neophyte. I'm sorry I snapped at you, Mark. I just feel like one of those mothers, you know, with toddler triplets, who has been hung on for too long."

He leaned against the opposite counter and regarded her. "That's **not** what you're feeling. At least not all of it."

She folded her arms across her knees and shrugged. "What do you want from me? Do you want me to really fall apart? Have a hysterical breakdown because the love of my life, my otherwise considerate, logical bondmate turns into a serial rapist every seven years or so? That's the human perspective on it. He's not human. And I knew that about him. I chose him, having been told there was a Mr. Hyde, if you will, to my otherwise cultured Dr. Jekyll. I took them **both**. Married **both** of them. And I made a promise. I can't blame him for it, or hate him. I just have to deal with it and get us both through it. And I did. One more time." her voice shook a little. "That's all I **can** deal with right now."

"I'm concerned for when it may be one time too many. Humans bend pretty well, but sometimes they can break. You've come through it physically. That's hard enough. But how about emotionally?"

"I just need some space of my own for a while. That's all. Even Sarek understands that. **He** isn't pushing me. He scooted out of the Fortress this morning without even talking to me. On the one hand, I am **so** grateful that he did. I couldn't face another scene of him feeling guilty and hating himself for what he did and what he felt, all together. And me having to comfort **him**. But, on the other hand, damn him."

"He's Vulcan. Denying emotion is his forte. That's not a human solution."

"We'll work it out. I know how to do that," Amanda insisted. "That isn't why I came to you."

"All right. You also need a cracked rib laser fused."

"Then just do it, and stop talking."

He picked up a hypospray.

"Oh, please. No drugs. You know they make me sick to my stomach. I can't face a day of being queasy. My ribs are too sore to spend the day retching."

"It's going to hurt, at least a bit."

"Do you think I can't handle that? Get on with it," she said, with nothing more than a sharp breath and a brushed away tear when he was done.

"I **hate** practicing medicine with no drugs," he complained bitterly, handing her a tissue, before putting away his instruments. "This isn't the fifteenth century."

"Just the aftermath of thousands of years in the Vulcan past." She blew her nose, and tossed the tissue into the recycler. "I'm done, right?"

"You'll should have another two days of sonics. Same time tomorrow and the day after?"

Amanda nodded, and slowly began to pull on her clothes. "I'll be here."

"You're not going back to work today, are you?" he asked worried.

"No. I took the rest of the week off. They know I'm not Vulcan. Even Sarek wouldn't have gone back so soon, except this was such a long one, and he necessarily had to leave a lot of irons in the fire. And I suspect he's got some cabin fever, too. And his healers are panting at the bit to make sure I didn't make a muck of handling their beloved clan leader."

"And he's running away from unpleasant things."

"He'll be home soon enough. I should be home when he returns. Just in case. But I think he's all right."

"Don't you know?" Mark asked.

"I know. If I cared to stretch my senses a little, I'd **really** know. But I'm too sore for that too. Mentally, that is. I can't make myself do it. But his healers will check him out. Make sure there's no lingering …issues."

"When will you know for sure?"

"By tomorrow, I expect."

"You two didn't talk?"

She blew out a breath, shrugging awkwardly into her jacket. "Not much. He thinks he's free of the fever.

"I'd think he'd come in with you."

Her eyes widened at that. "You are expecting a lot. I told you. I'm a little surfeit of Vulcan attentions right now. And while he would deny he's embarrassed, he's definitely not ready to face **your** too knowing gaze."

"And physically? He got through it okay?"

"If I'm all right, why wouldn't Sarek be?" she asked, astonished at his persistence. "He's the one with ten times my strength and three times my mass."

"You sound a little resentful."

"Sarek can go into a light healing trance and be nearly right as rain two hours after one of these. Vulcans are built for this. I'm not."

"You sound **really** resentful."

"Oh spare me your psychological theorizing," Amanda retorted, sliding from the table to her feet. "I've got an errand to run, a Vulcan husband to coddle, and being human, I only have so much time or strength. I'll see you tomorrow." Amanda paused, puzzled. "You sure you haven't heard anything about Amy Prue?"

"I don't have any concerns, no." Mark said. "It's getting late, you'd better run if you want to miss my nursing staff."

"All right, then." Amanda said, and took her leave.

_to be continued..._


	3. Chapter 3

**An Ideal Husband**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 3**

_"How silly to write on pink paper! It looks like the beginning of a middle-class romance. Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement"_

She flew to the fertile plans of the Shikahr Valley after that. T'Pau's Palace looked pretty enough to be worthy of its tourist Holocards, lematya banners snapping on the flag poles, her Palace guard out in their archaic uniforms. At the main entrance, a fleet of Terran blue tourist buses, clashing horribly with the ochre sands, discharged and swallowed up their small groups of passengers. Signs that even the mighty T'Pau was reduced to doing her share to fill the greedy Federation tax maw with tourist credits.

Apparently to give the tourists more of a show, someone had dragged out some ancient Vulcan siege weapons to decorate the entrances, even though the Palace had been built after Surak had negotiated his great Peace, and the Palace had never been a working Fortress as her home had once been. More of a show castle. It was certainly prettier than her own home, but Amanda looked down on it for that.

"Sucks to you, you fake old Folly," she told it, as its force shields dropped to her flyer's coded transmitter.

Amanda turned her flyer to a side entrance, and ignored the tourists who'd turned recording cameras in her direction, hoping to scan out one of T'Pau's visitors. She walked through the fabulous gardens, fountains tinkling, pleased that the tourists weren't in this part of the grounds.

It was too early for even lunch, but T'Pau had laid out a late breakfast to receive her, the sign of a very kind regard. Amanda dropped to her knees before the Matriarch, and gave her hands over in the familial embrace.

"You are well, child," T'Pau said, letting go of her hands to brush Amanda's temples briefly before pulling her hand back as if fearful of intruding on her privacy. No doubt nervous about any too recent memories of her son's flaming fever.

"Of course, I'm well," Amanda said. "Why wouldn't I be well?" The Matriarch just gave her a direct, intense look.

"I'm well enough," Amanda repeated.

"But you indicated that you had something of **import** to see me about." T'Pau reminded her, gesturing her to a seat, and seating herself with every evidence of reluctance.

Amanda eyes widened as she realized the Matriarch expected some dire announcement from her. "I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd infer that. You've seen Sarek surely." Amanda was surprised at T'Pau's suppositions. Sarek invariably was a bit shattered after any Pon Far, but he **was** walking around, functional. She was sure T'Pau had already been informed from her Council aides, if not the healers themselves, if not from her own spies in Sarek's Fortress Guard, that Sarek had made it through another _Time, _and was back in circulation this morning_._

"Not seen. I have heard that he has one again survived the _Time_." T'Pau's expression gave away nothing. "But no more. And nothing about you, from you, save this request."

"He's seeing the healers today, but he believes he is well."

"T'Rueth says he has not eaten, since the _Time_," T'Pau worried.

Amanda bit her lip, half amused, half annoyed by this evidence T'Pau had spies even within her own staff. Though T'Rueth and T'Pau would have reason to be concerned if that were true, since a lack of appetite would indicate a Vulcan had not recovered properly from the Fever. "He **has**, judging by the state of my supplies. Just not anything T'Rueth prepared. I laid in food in our suite," Amanda explained. "Most of it got eaten and certainly not by me."

"I am relieved to hear this. When you indicated you had something of import-"

"There's nothing wrong with us**, **that I know of. Nothing wrong with me, either. At least, not that a little time and distance from these events won't repair."

"Indeed." T'Pau offered her tea, a bit testily, and Amanda realized she must have given her mother-in-law a good scare.

"I'm sorry. It is actually about another I've come to ask. I hate to bother you. But I believe something like this, between human and Vulcan. Well, you would not only **have** to know, you might be the **only** person who would be informed."

Some of the Matriarch's wooden stiffness fractionally relaxed, and she blinked. "Of whom do you wish to speak?"

"There was a young woman, who came to my Academy Office to see me, just before I - well, just before she said she was going to marry. A Vulcan, that is. I didn't have time to deal with her or warn you then. The girl was Amy Prue. The Vulcan-" Amanda faltered, because T'Pau's face had closed again, and she had held up her hand to forestall any further comment.

"It's best not to speak of these events."

Amanda took a breath. "What events?"

T'Pau just sketched a Vulcan negative, refusing to comment.

"Please tell me she didn't get married."

"That I cannot do."

"She married," Amanda repeated, and sighed. "I thought it a **very** unpropitious match. I tried to warn her against it. You'll have your hands full with her, I'm afraid. She told me that she intends to market her situation for profit, as a sort of penny dreadful romance. She even threatened **me**. Hopefully, the healers put that notion out of her head, and explained the notion of Vulcan privacy. But she may be a bit headstrong on that point. You may have to bribe her to keep her from spilling Vulcan secrets. Fortunately, she seems the type to trade her silence for that sort of currency."

"I have no concerns on that score," T'Pau said.

"She's been spoken to then?" Amanda asked. Still more than a bit dehydrated, Amanda drank her tea, before looking over at T'Pau. "You worked something out?"

"No."

"She is all right?" Amanda ventured. "I mean, in spite of her attitude, I was concerned for her, knowing the volatile nature of a Vulcan male in the _Time_, but…" she trailed off. _I made it through_, was her thought. _I made it through. I don't want to think beyond that. I can't._

T'Pau said nothing.

"She'll recover, at least," Amanda insisted.

"My Daughter, this is none of your concern."

"**Tell me**," Amanda said, biting out the words, her hands now clenched.

"Unfortunately, the young lady was the victim of an _unspecified fever_." T'Pau said the words with cool Vulcan neutrality.

Amanda's breath caught in her throat. She'd heard the phrase since her earliest days on Vulcan, newscasters rattling off some statistic, but even when she finally understood what they meant, she had never known, never actually spoken, to any real casualty of the syndrome.

"Was it dehydration?" Amanda asked. "Did she die at Iolani?"

"Amanda. This is private. By tradition, only the families of the individuals involved are entitled to know the facts."

"Damn tradition."

"It would not be good for you to know."

"**Tell** me." Amanda stared T'Pau down. "I will find out one way or another. I'd rather hear this from you."

And the Matriarch relented. "She married the day after you and Sarek were secluded," T'Pau reiterated, her voice emotionless. "She and her mate attempted to reside in her Federation Center apartment, but her contract was terminated upon her marriage and she was evicted. They then went to Iolani."

"Oh, no," Amanda said, remembering again her own brief experience with Iolani's nightmarish heat and dryness. Even with Sarek quickly hustling her out of there, bundling her into an aircar, her brief exposure to that searing environment had given her a tremendous respect for the inhospitable nature of Vulcan's equatorial deserts. "It was dehydration, then," she insisted.

"You seem unwilling to spare yourself this knowledge, even though it must give everyone who knows of it pain." T'Pau tilted her head, regarding her disapprovingly. "It surely can't profit you to know the circumstances. It was not a natural death, my daughter."

"Dehydration isn't natural."

"Her death was the result of an_ unspecified fever_. More than that, you need not know."

Amanda sank back, pushing her tea away with a shaking hand. "What a waste of two young lives." Still exhausted and emotionally raw from her own ordeal, tears sprung to her eyes and she wiped them sadly away.

"Two? But only one, my child. **Stregan** is unharmed."

Amanda paused, hand at her cheek mid-pause. "He's unharmed. **Unharmed**?!" She gripped both arms of her chair and half rose. "But how can that be? Wouldn't he have died when his mate did, since he was in the grip of the Fever?"

T'Pau tilted her head in a Vulcan shrug. "Presumably his marriage was well consummated before her demise. According to his employer, he is well."

"His employer? You mean he went back to **work**? He's not in **custody**?"

"For what? Males are not to be held responsible for their actions in Pon Far."

Amanda was non-plussed, and then remembered something Amy Prue had said. "But his first wife died seven years ago. He's done this before! Hasn't he?"

"There was an unfortunate prior incident, yes," T'Pau admitted.

"He preyed on that girl! He's nothing but a sexual serial killer."

"She **chose** to marry him. Against all counsel and advice." T'Pau held out her hands in a rare for her gesture of helplessness. "In such circumstances, what can be done? She was of age, by human standards. Who could stop her?"

"Someone should have stopped **him**! Tell me he didn't choose a human because a Vulcan women wouldn't have him."

"In such circumstances, it _is_ difficult for a male to find a Vulcan female to agree to bond."

"So he did prey on that girl. Who officiated at that wedding? What **Vulcan** would allow that ignorant, foolish woman to marry him, knowing that he would rapidly be in Pon Far and that she was completely clueless as to what that meant for her, or even how to survive it?"

"Amanda, they were married in a Federation civil ceremony. No Vulcan **would** marry them."

"A **Terran** ceremony. Oh," Amanda sank back, appalled anew. She shook her head. "It shouldn't be **allowed**."

"Indeed. I have never approved of the intermarriage of Vulcans with outworlders. I have tried to oppose such unions. If you recall, I strenuously opposed your own marriage to my son. But as Vulcans are now Federation citizens they are entitled to take advantage of these options. I would need," she eyed Amanda calmly and pointedly, "allies to enact some legislation to prevent these things in future." She raised an expectant brow.

Amanda shied back a bit from that. "I would have to think about that. And **you** were primarily concerned with Sarek. With your traditions, the continuation of your family line."

"Naturally, I had personal concerns. I was also concerned that this young woman's fate would also be your own." T'Pau reached out, in an almost unknown gesture for a Vulcan, and touched her hand to Amanda's as if in comfort, for herself or for Amanda it would be hard to say. "It so very nearly was, my child. Or so very well could be."

Amanda shivered at that. "I've been very lucky, haven't I? I certainly wasn't much smarter than she. It was just sheer...dumb...luck."

"Not entirely. There is also character. I think Sarek has been fortunate, that if he were to marry a human, it was you that he chose."

Two tears spilled from Amanda's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, T'Pau."

xxx

She couldn't face going to the Academy after that. She didn't actually believe the ghost of Amy Prue would be there, leaning up against her office doorframe, castigating her for not preventing her death. Not warning her **enough**. Not counseling her, selfishly not helping **her** to prepare, as Amanda had frenetically prepared herself for Pon Far with a Vulcan. She had not done enough.

And what **could** she do to prevent any future Amy Prues, that was the question. And even if she could, did she want to? Should she help T'Pau?

And Stregan walking free. Taunting her. Haunting her.

No, she wasn't yet up to inhabiting the same space, breathing the same air, she and Amy had both shared a few weeks ago. She was still alive. Amy was now dead.

Amanda wondered if any of her office neighbors would be agree to a change. She wasn't sure she **could** return to that office.

Instead she flew home. Sarek's flyer was in its spot in the hanger. Usually he worked long hours after the enforced absence a Pon Far dictated. She always felt it was less because he was catching up, and more because he was simply embarrassed, in a purely Vulcan way, to face her. That the easiest way for him to purge that emotion was to concentrate on work, logic, duty. Become super Vulcan for a while. That he needed to put some physical space and time between the pre-Reform Vulcan he had recently been with her at home, and the modern Vulcan his profession dictated.

But neither she nor Sarek were quite the same people they had been before he'd succumbed to _vrie_.

So she wasn't really surprised to see his flyer there. As she had told Mark, she rather expected it, though it was unlike his previous behavior.

"You're home early," she said to him when she came across him seated at a table looking out over the Terrace gardens. She had to admit to herself, that she wasn't **entirely** all that pleased to see him. It was what she had told Mark. She didn't love Sarek any less after these intervals. But she needed some space, particularly after these worst of Pon Fars, to put that pre-Reform Vulcan out of her mind, and let her feelings for the husband who wore his face to return. And right now her emotions were in a turmoil. She could have used a brief respite from Vulcan and Vulcans. Sarek might have formerly retreated into his Super-Vulcan mode, and stayed away after a Pon Far. And she might have been miffed with him for it. But perhaps he sensed she had formerly needed that as much as he.

But it seemed that too had changed.

T'Jar came silently, set out a laden tea tray, and departed with only the briefest glance to each of their faces. Amanda spared enough of her attention to give the girl a nod.

He poured himself and her tea. "There was nothing particularly pressing. My aides were competent. And I wished to be here." There was a definite shade of emotion coloring his words at his last statement. She raised a brow at that. Even, perhaps especially post Pon Far, that was emotional for Sarek. If Spock had said something to her in that tone, his father would have been all over him for it.

Her eyes cut to his, evaluating him. He was appreciably thinner, hollows in his cheeks, a trace more gray, perhaps in his hair. But he moved easily enough, his hands were steady as he poured, and while she sensed he wasn't pleased with himself, she didn't think he was consumed by any too dark Vulcan passion. But that could be wishful thinking on her part.

"Are you all right? The healers cleared you?"

He blinked at that. "I am quite well. Thank you."

She blinked at that odd expression from his lips. Vulcans didn't thank, given their actions were always presumed to have a logical motive. Gratitude was both emotional and illogical. But something in the way he said those words made her think they had more than a social meaning. Other than his odd words, and the tinge of emotion coloring his phrasing, his manner was calmly Vulcan. "If you are thanking me for what I think you are thanking me for," she said, a trifle acerbically, "please don't."

No reaction to that, his face utterly neutral. She sank across from him, worn out from her interview with T'Pau on top of the stress of the last two weeks. She repressed an odd desire to slap his face. _Down girl_, she thought. _Nice Kitty._ _You wanted a Vulcan. You got one._

"I think **you** are unwell," he noted, handing her a cup. "You should drink. You are still dehydrated."

"I'm just tired." _Too tired to be angry._ "I had tea with T'Pau. She gave me some news today."

"Indeed." Sarek didn't comment further. Or meet her eyes.

She looked across at him. Events like what had occurred between Stregan and Amy Prue, bonding issues, Challenge issues, were not the province of Vulcan males. Never. They were handled by the Matriarch. No Vulcan would discuss such an issue with Sarek. But humans from the Terran Embassy might. Somehow, she knew, she just **knew**, with the intimacy of the bond still giving her an enhanced awareness of him, that **he** was familiar with the details too.

"So you know about Stregan and Prue?"

His eyes widened slightly. "How do **you** know of them?"

"Amy Prue came to visit me, in my office, before, well just before they married."

Sarek raised his brows, his eyes even wider. On a Vulcan, such an expression made him look appalled. Almost as if he might faint. "She was a **friend**?" His voice rose notably, human style, with his question.

Amanda blinked, puzzled in spite of her own emotions by his reaction. "No. That was the first time I had ever spoken to her. And she, well, she wouldn't ever have been a friend. In fact, with what she planned, she would have been more like an enemy." She looked at him. "How do you know about this? This isn't something Vulcan males are supposed to be involved in. Did the Terrans bring it to you?"

"There have been questions asked about her demise," Sarek admitted.

Amanda sighed. "I confess I too don't understand why Stregan is just allowed to walk free."

Sarek tilted his head, looking at her. "One might say the same of me."

"Oh," All the events of the last two weeks rushed in to overwhelm her, and Amanda put her face in her hands, wanting to shut out the world and all these conflicts. After a moment, Sarek put a hand on her shoulder. She shifted uncomfortably under it. He took it away again.

"Forgive me."

"There's nothing for me to forgive," she said, not looking up. "You didn't rape me, Sarek."

He was silent a moment. "By Vulcan standards, perhaps not. But by human, perhaps yes. And I have been newly informed the Federation penalty for rape is fifteen years to life in a maximum security detention center. Of course, a Vulcan would not survive the first seven. And for a murder, the sentence is thirty to life. In either way, the sentence for a Vulcan in those circumstances would be death."

"I never said no. You didn't rape me, and you certainly didn't kill me. I entered into our marriage knowing the facts. And willing."

"Not all of the facts."

She raised her head. "Certainly all you or the healers could expect. You didn't know all the facts either. No one anticipated what happened to us. And I'm sure she was counseled too."

He raised a brow. "Amy Prue knew those essentials as well. She was willing."

Amanda sighed. "Is the Terran Embassy really asking for Stregan to be charged for her murder? I think he should be punished. Or dealt with somehow. But ... not a human style murder trial."

"How would you suggest he be punished?" Sarek asked, looking at her.

"I don't know. Don't ask me that Sarek." Amanda rubbed her temples. "What do **they** want?"

"They are seeking an investigation. Which of course cannot be allowed."

"I'm beginning to have an unwilling sympathy for the Terran Embassy," Amanda mused. She looked over at her husband. "I thought Amy Prue was **such** a fool. **She** had no idea what she was getting into. **She** was living in some fantasy world." She shook her head. "Still, I imagine **they** always thought the same of **me**. In fact, I'm sure of it. Maybe to a lesser extent, but the same, you know, in all the relevant parts. Just a matter of degree, really, from their perspective. I **knew** that's what they thought of me." She laughed without humor. "And I thought myself so superior. I never thought of **myself** like that. I was different, you know. I knew what I was doing. I had Prince Charming for a husband. I was the interstellar Cinderella. I was such a flaming **fool**, Sarek."

"Amanda-"

"How can they go after Stregan? Amy became a Vulcan citizen when she married him, didn't she? **Vulcan** laws take precedence."

"They were not married by Vulcan law," Sarek said. "They were unbonded. They were married in a Federation civil ceremony. The status of her Vulcan citizenship and the pertinence of Vulcan laws to her situation could be debated."

Amanda looked up, horrified. "They were unbonded? T'Pau never mentioned that."

"As an elder, as Matriarch, she finds that dishonor even more difficult to countenance."

"How could Stregan do that?"

"He was in the Fever. He wasn't thinking logically."

"He **preyed** on her."

"He wasn't fully responsible for his actions."

"Terrans won't think of it that way."

"I know," Sarek's voice was soft. "Perhaps I sympathize with the Terrans more than you realize. And even with Stregan."

Amanda looked at her husband. "Don't take what I say too much to heart. I'm a little rough right now emotionally. And you and I have some fences to mend. But you're not him. You didn't prey on me."

"Didn't I?" His eyes cut to hers.

"Courting is not preying."

"No. But I am Vulcan. In different circumstances, their fate could have been ours." He turned a little away from Amanda and his voice came in a hush. "I did not know that Miss Prue's name was Amy."

"I'm not she." Amanda did reach out and took his hand in hers. "Sarek. You and I knew each other, and **loved** each other, before we married. And it was two years after our marriage before your first Pon Far, not a few hours. She couldn't have loved him. She hadn't known him long. She just wanted a Vulcan. And he certainly did not love her. As I know you love and loved me. In spite of, not because of, my being human. And I love you **irrespective** of your being Vulcan."

He looked down at her hand on his, the first time she'd consciously touched him or really allowed his touch without flinching since Pon Far. Then raised his eyes to hers.

"All right. She put her other hand over his, "Maybe I'm a little angry – not angry precisely, but resentful and feeling put upon. It was a bad one, Sarek. The short ones I can manage, but I don't have Vulcan stamina when the fever last longer than four days. I love you in spite of that. I won't say it's easy." She shivered. "But at least we're **bonded**. I can't imagine a woman going through that and not being bonded. That would be rape. It would be nightmarish."

He moved to put an arm around her when she shivered, then stopped and looked a question. She nodded, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I agree," he said. "It is unimaginable. But I suspect with the Fever upon him, logical choice had become impossible."

"What will happen?" she asked.

"They will try. We will refuse. Eventually something more politically expedient will happen to divert their attention and they will move on. Their protests are somewhat perfunctory. I gather her disappearance is almost as much of a relief to them as it might be to-" he hesitated.

"To Vulcan? Should she have carried out her plans?"

"That would never have happened," Sarek dismissed. "One way or another, they would have been prevailed upon to respect Vulcan conventions. In spite of her ambitions."

"**She** would have accepted a bribe," Amanda said dryly. "I'm not sure even you could afford what she wanted though."

"Vulcans do not succumb to blackmail. There are other ways to prevail upon such a pair. Even if she was not subject to Vulcan justice, he was. And Vulcan is more important to the Federation than the Federation is to Vulcan. If he could not control her, if we could not have, they would have."

"And Amy Prue just disappears," Amanda said. "A convenience to everyone." She paused a moment, then admitted. "Like **I** almost did." She thought about that a moment, and shuddered.

For a moment Sarek hesitated. "Yes. Though there was somewhat more concern regarding **your** disappearance, my wife."

"Aren't I lucky to be so popular?" Amanda said dryly. "All that concern didn't help, though did it? I was still trapped."

Sarek put out a hand to cover hers. "I have not forgotten **my** promise, Amanda."

"To let me go?" Her lips twisted, looking down at his hand over hers, the antithesis of his statement. But still... "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad for you. There must be other Amandas, other Amy Prues out there."

He drew back as if burned. "Don't." After a moment, he regained control. "That is unfair."

Amanda sighed and looked up at him. "You're right. You'll have to forgive me if I tell you that I find it a little harder to love you as much post Pon Far than I do normally. It's a bit too soon, Sarek. I'm trying."

"I do understand." He looked down into her eyes. "But we have a shared history, Amanda, of good and bad. After an unfortunate period, it behooves us to reinforce the good. I need to try as well, as you put it."

"What does that mean?" Amanda said warily, suspicious of that _entrée_. "I don't want another ten acres of roses, or a box of Hershey bars. I don't want any kind of present, Sarek, even couched in practicality like a new aircar or computer. Don't give me **anything**. It would feel too much like - Remember, **I'm** not looking for a bribe."

"I am aware of that. However, since I am sure you are surfeit of being home, I thought we might engage in some pleasant diversion."

"What sort of diversion?" she asked, suspicious anew. "I don't want two weeks on the Riviera either." She thought about that. "Though it would give me a chance to get away from my office ghosts," she added consideringly. Then shuddered. "But no, I don't."

He blinked but didn't pretend to understand her non-sequitor. "The Academy Symphony is playing tonight," he offered.

"You want to go **out**?" she was shocked at that. "Sarek, you **never** want to go out. Particularly not after - And we could listen to music just as well at home."

"It's true that I am often surfeit of the numerous social obligations we are required to attend, that when we have a free evening, I don't often choose to be social. But given our recent...confinement, perhaps we **should** go out."

"My head is aching a little too much to sit through four hours of screeching instruments, though," Amanda admitted. "And if we left early, it could be taken amiss."

He flicked a brow, perhaps in similar agreement. "If you don't care for the symphony, the Federation Players are presenting _The Real Inspector Hound_."

Amanda winced. "No. No murder mysteries, Sarek. Not even in spoof."

"I hesitate to mention this event, given the title. But the Shikahr Comedy Club is presenting a play entitled "The Ideal Husband."

Against her will, Amanda's mouth twisted. "If anything speaks to the fact that we live in a diverse and multifaceted Federation, it is the existence of a group called The Shikahr Comedy Club. That alone is hilarious."

"They are mostly human," Sarek said in feigned indifference, but looking at her reluctant smile with intent. "It is an Oscar Wilde play."

"I know the play." She looked at Sarek in sudden suspicion. "Do you?"

He gave the fractional chin jerk to the left that was a Vulcan negative, one brow flicking. "Should I?"

"It's about the naïve wife of a corrupt politician, who discovers she perhaps is holding everyone, including herself, to an unrealistic ideal. Are you **sure** you didn't bribe them to run this play?"

His brows rose to his forehead in an expression of Vulcan innocence. "Amanda, I may be Vulcan, and heir to certain unfortunate biological compulsions. But I am not **corrupt**."

"You can be devious, though," she said consideringly. "In your own Vulcan way."

"I would never bribe a set of actors to present a play I am unfamiliar with, on the slim chance you might agree to attend a performance with me. Particularly when I could have no idea either of us would be capable or willing to attend."

"Hmmm." Amanda said, conceding that. "So you're inviting me on a date?" she asked.

He sat back, eyeing her. "My limited understanding of human social conventions is that dating is an activity one engages in prior to the state of marriage. But I suppose that is essentially what I am asking."

"I want to take a nap this afternoon," she said, considering. "But, oddly enough, I **like** the idea of getting out for a while this evening. Just to...gain some perspective. Recharge. I just can't deal with issues like Stregan and T'Pau yet. And I could use some diversion. Even a laugh. So could you, I expect."

"I will not-"

"Oh, you know what I mean. As long as we make it a short night. I'll still be a little tired."

"Very well."

She gave him a direct look. "And as long as you realize that just because I'm going on a date with you that you are **not** going to get lucky tonight. And don't give me those innocent Vulcan brows and pretend you don't know the colloquialism and what it means in respect to dating. You do."

"I have already been very lucky, my wife," Sarek said. "To use your colloquialism. And I should not wish to get lucky again, as you call it, for some time." He shuddered slightly. "Not for at least a week."

She snorted at that. "You **wish**. But...I guess I've been lucky too," she said, with renewed awareness of her mortality. "We both are." She looked up at him. "So, let me take a bath redolent with Orion love bubbles. You might even join me."

"Immerse myself in water?" Sarek asked, making, what for a Vulcan, was a moue of distaste. "I think not."

"They are great for soreness. And it might be fun."

He eyed her, fractionally, "I'll consider it," he said, as one giving a great concession.

"Aren't you brave, my husband? And then, after a nap," she gave him her hand, sans flinching, "to _An Ideal Husband_?"

"To _An Ideal Husband_," Sarek said.

But before raising her to her feet, he took her hand and kissed it. She looked down at him, thinking of when he'd first made that pretty gesture, her own buried feelings of love somewhat rekindling at the touch.

And then, when she rose, she leaned up to him, and kissed him, carefully, tentatively. Mindful of everything from her ribs to their recent past.

"Amanda?" he asked, more than a bit surprised. This was no more her normal behavior, this soon post Pon Far, than it was his.

"Maybe you'll get lucky a bit sooner, my husband," she said, taking his other hand, and letting him feel her emotions. She was sore. She still felt overly pawed over. There were still ghosts she had to banish. But she was well aware that she did have her Sarek back. Not forever. But for perhaps three years before that other, pre-Reform Vulcan returned. And when he did, she could handle it. They could. She was sure of it, as she perhaps had never been quite sure before.

And with that prospect, she smiled up at him for real this time.

And after a moment, he returned her kiss. "How unfortunate there is not a play this evening entitled _An Ideal Wife_."

She laughed. "Maybe you need to write our romance from a Vulcan perspective. That would be fascinating."

"Perhaps someday I shall," he said.

Halfway up the stairs, she paused, stricken. "But Sarek, what **are** we going to do about Stregan? T'Pau has asked me to work on legislation with her. To ban marriages of Vulcans to outworlders. And Sarek... I **almost** agreed."

"Did you really?" he asked, almost lazily. "And only almost?"

She looked up at him. "When you are in your right mind, you have absolutely no fear, do you my husband?"

"With such a wife as you, why would I?"

She snorted at that. "I assumed of course that **we'd** be grandfathered in. But it's not a simple problem. Stregan has to be stopped. But even with all our issues, that I am only **too** familiar with, I just can't deny a couple who are sincerely attached the right to marry. I mean, it would be hypocritical in me, and just wrong in principle. So I put her off. But you know your mother can never be thwarted for long. And she has some very good, **logical** arguments supporting her position," she finished earnestly.

"I'm sure she will be honored at your assessment of her logic."

"Sarek," she warned. "It's a little too soon for you to laugh at **my** logic. I love you...but maybe not that much. Not **this** week."

He looked down at her. "I'll think of something."

"Something," she said. "Just like that. You're very confident, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Against her will, she smiled. "Perhaps it is one of my faults. It certainly can be one of yours at times. But I **like** that about you, Sarek of Vulcan. I always have."

"How fortunate it is that your faults and my alleged faults so neatly correspond," he teased in return.

"Alleged, indeed," Amanda scoffed. "But I don't think it's fortune, my husband." She put her hand back in his. "I think it is fate."

"Fate, fortune, love," Sarek said. "Even I must concede, my wife, that it was not **entirely** logic alone."

"So T'Pau's logic doesn't scare you," Amanda said, with quiet realization.

"I am here," Sarek said. "You are here. And nothing Vulcan has yet thrown at us has changed that."

"We stand through hurricanes," Amanda said, thinking of her painful, pitiful preparations.

"Through the flames of Pon Far, and the fires of vrie. And the storms of human emotion," he added archly.

Amanda smiled, "Well, my stalwart Vulcan. If you are all that impermeable to flame and storm, you are certainly up to facing a little water."

"I suppose," he said, with reluctant consideration, "given your recent accommodations to my requirements, it is only fair trade."

"Our shared history," she said. And they climbed the stairs together.

_"You were to me something apart from common life_

_a thing pure, noble, honest, without stain_

_The world seemed to me finer because you were in it,_

_and goodness more real, because you lived"_

_fini_

_Quotes from Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband"_


End file.
